Smart Growth Advocates Put Out Video Praising Bus Rapid Transit

About a month before the bus rapid transit plan heads to public hearings in front of the Montgomery County Council, smart growth advocates have put together a video supporting the proposed 79-mile, 10 corridor transit network.

Included in the video, made by the Coalition for Smart Growth, are Friends of White Flint Executive Director Lindsay Hoffman, blogger Dan Reed and Planning Board Commissioner Casey Anderson, who supports a BRT network that includes bus-only lanes.

“For the last 50 years, we’ve planned for more and more cars and more and more sprawling development going out in every direction. And we’ve reached a dead end with that,” Anderson says in the video. “So the challenge now and the exciting thing is to figure out how we can plan for the future. It’s going to be easier and cheaper than widening all the roads and building new highways.”

Many have expressed reservations about taking away a lane of regular traffic for bus-only use. Residents in Chevy Chase say they are worried about the safety of the buses, right-of-way land acquisition and how the bus-only lanes would affect access to their neighborhoods.